B1ad3: "We want to build a team that is winning trophies constantly, but you need resources for this"

"We are focusing on squeezing the maximum out of this lineup," the Ukrainian tactician added.

Natus Vincere came into ESL Pro League S22 after a confidence-boosting campaign at StarLadder Fall 2025, where they lifted their first trophy of 2025 against lower-ranked opposition.

Despite the title, however, Andrey "⁠B1ad3⁠" Gorodenskiy says the team needs to remain grounded after coming up against better opposition in Stockholm.

"You cannot get so much confidence from a tier-three event — in terms of teams," B1ad3 said about their campaign in Budapest.

Natus Vincere's coach also spoke about Drin "⁠makazze⁠" Shaqiri's steady intergration into the team, the win against The MongolZ, and the team's mentality for the rest of the season.

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B1ad3, congratulations, you're through to the playoffs. 2-0 over The MongolZ with some scary moments there, but you got it over the line over the team that was ranked No. 1 on the VRS and HLTV coming into this event. What does that mean for you and for NAVI?

It means a lot. It shows us the progress, [it's] very good for this. For me, really, it was the minimum we did. We beat all the teams that we should beat, and I'm still giving us some time to play Malta, to play Chengdu, to see more. makazze really needs some time to adjust to our system, and usually you need a minimum of six months to see if a system will work with a new player. A new player is still creating ideas, decision-making, he has some specific duties and roles to do that you need to make pretty sharp and crispy, not sloppy.

That's why this win is very good overall, but I was expecting us, even if we lose, for me it was fine at this event, all big teams are here, nobody is missing, to be 2-3. It would be fine, but we knew they are not in the best shape now, so we knew it was a good chance for us.

Talking about makazze's development a bit, how has that come along? As you said, it takes a lot of time, but what have you noticed in the last couple of months?

I don't believe in the thing that inexperienced players can play tier-one CS the same as experienced players. Which is obvious, but a lot of stuff is missing that you're kinda used to expecting, like you're expecting this to happen. For example, Mihai [iM] was playing this role before on a lot of maps, of Drin [makazze], and it's different for sure because Mihai learned it for a long time. We played a lot and were constantly improving, adding this, adding that, and then eventually you come to a specific model where Mihai is speaking a lot, creating ideas, you know which ideas he can already know, which protocols in this situation, protocols in that situation.

And now, obviously, Drin cannot just grab it from his head and do it, he also needs time. That's why I think it can be any new player, it doesn't matter, he will not be able to get so sharp. Unless somebody is doing this before he comes here, to work with him so much that he will be prepared in all aspects, in meta, learning variations in all his roles, and so on. For now, his progress is normal, just genuinely how it should be. A player from the academy came, and from tournament to tournament is improving, match by match.

I cannot say something unbelievable is happening, and I will not surprise anyone with these words. I think we know that he can sometimes play bad, sometimes play good, but he is also not a red flag here. It's an essential problem when players without background... ah, no, you cannot take players, invite them to the team, with background. Because even if you do this, you don't know which one, which background they have. I always speak about this and it's a huge problem of CS, because you need to either reprogram him, to rebuild everything, or to teach him a lot of stuff. One of these. There's no chance he has the same system that you created.

It's interesting, it sounds similar to what YEKINDAR was telling me with molodoy coming into FURIA and how they're working to build him into that system. What are you working on specifically or trying to change with makazze in that sense?

If we speak about molodoy, I'm pretty sure if you put him in another team, he would perform much worse. Trust me. I think FalleN and YEKINDAR are doing a great job there because they are playing with a lot of creativity and a lot of meta things. They are able to play smart, a step ahead, not obvious, and I'm pretty sure they communicate a lot. It's very easy for young players when you speak a lot and others can speak for you, and you understand more. They're kinda opening more for you, revealing more fog of war, exposing everything, what is happening on the map.

At the moment, Drin is the player who should do this, he's in a speaking role. That's the thing. So... we're just doing the same as we did before with Drin, nothing special. I'm trying to teach him his role more and more, to integrate him more in the system, but at the same time I am trying not to give him too much because it's hard. Gamers, you know? Young gamers, they only know how to play, they want to sit, eat, play, like 80% of their routine. So for sure you need to give them time, because if you put him insta in all this stuff, his head will blow up. So we are trying slowly.

You want him to develop by himself a bit.

Yeah.

When it comes to out-of-the-game stuff, so more of the atmosphere side, what has he added on that end?

I'm not sure if other players said about this, that he is kinda a positive guy. He's constantly trying to make jokes, and he's not thinking too much of mistakes, he will not tilt a lot. He's the guy who is very fast to switch to something else and be positive about failing something, like, 'It's fine, next round is a new opportunity.' Yeah, a young guy, fresh blood, another cultural background, which is also important stuff.

An international lineup is quite a cool thing, when you're in the practice room, always somebody is speaking like, some language from Lord of the Rings — I'm speaking about Finnish, like it's true, he was inspired by the Finnish language... I mean the Elves' language. And also Romanian, before it was Lithuanian. If they all start speaking in their FACEIT PUGs, it sounds very funny. And now, you see not the same language, it's something new. Like some new accent, it's cool.

You said earlier that for your expectation for the event, you would've been okay with 2-3. Something Aleksi mentioned as well was that your confidence coming into the event was higher because of StarSeries, but then those two losses you took at EPL brought that confidence down. What's the confidence now that you've beaten The MongolZ and you're going to playoffs?

You know, StarLadder was just a tournament to test ourselves. If we were going to lose it, it would be a red flag, so it was the main point, obviously. You cannot get so much confidence from a tier-three event — in terms of teams, I mean. But still, it was a positive sign for us. Winning is also important. It cannot be a game-changer, but it can help to at least have a break from losing (laughs). It helped us a lot in this aspect.

So that's why I wanted to play more at this event, then play a real tier-two event at the next one, like Thunderpick. For me, that's like when we can say we're missing S-tier teams, if you had them it would be tier-one obviously. So we're missing S-tier, it's a very good challenge. For us it's for sure much better to have a chance to win a tournament without the best teams, but still with very good teams. Like FURIA, The MongolZ, and Aurora are there, so very good lineups.

For us, this tournament and the next tournament is just a building process because we're not a complete team yet. It doesn't mean we're coming like 'guys, let's lose.' We are always trying to show our best and we know philosophies like this, that you always have a chance to win. You just need to do your part of the job and maybe they'll make a lot of mistakes in their part of the job and we will win.

In Austin, you said that event was going to be a test for the team, and then you made a roster change with makazze. And then you said recently in a video with NAVI that this next Major is also going to be a test for this lineup. Can you tell me about setting that expectation and how you've changed your mentality with this? NAVI was a multi-title winner last year, but it's been completely different this year, so how have you shifted your mentality?

I think it changed when we made the international lineup and we didn't have any star player at that moment. I was already expecting to create a core, to start a building process and try to cook something. Eventually it worked pretty well, that the system could help us a lot by beating so many promising top teams who should usually win the trophies.

I think until we have a star lineup, we cannot be a team that is coming with huge pressure and confidence to win every tournament and smashing everyone. When s1mple was in the team, people were saying the correct thing that we have the best player in the world and we should start winning or change something to start winning.

When you have donk in the team, it's kinda the same. You have the potential to be the best team in the world because you have the best player in the world. You just need to build everything around him and integrate him properly. You can say the same about ZywOo. Now, Falcons is a pretty good team in my opinion, for sure a top five team, and they have a very promising lineup. They have potential and they are trophy contenders. Their lineup is built for this. They have expectations, pressure.

I cannot be delusional. Even if NAVI tells me, or if fans tell me NAVI is a trophy organization in CS, I cannot come with pink glasses and say, 'guys, yeah, let's do it. Let's win.' I know how we play in scrims and what our limit is. So for me it's more about staying in reality. Of course, we all want NAVI to win, we're never just building something. It's step by step, we want to build a team that is winning trophies constantly, like Vitality did before. This is a goal, but you need resources for this, you need players.

Every time between seasons we try to do this. We try to speak with players, if we can get somebody, not just randomly but specifically who can be good with the vision we have to win, these kinds of players. For now we're fully focused on this lineup. We're not thinking just 'for a while.' We are focusing on squeezing the maximum out of this lineup.

s1mple has been performing really well on BC.Game. What do you make of his progress after returning?

I didn't have a lot of time to watch, but I think it's important to watch a lot of his games to understand. His stats show he's pretty good lately. I think he needs a LAN, maybe one or two LANs, especially now when VRS, LAN wins is an amazing thing, you can come and farm. I think maybe they don't know about this yet, you can just play two LANs and get +400 points or something. It's a strong thing. He just needs to go to some LANs and get some confidence. Online is a little bit different.

Lastly, you were talking earlier about getting a young, inexperienced player into the team and it being hard to get them into an experienced sort of setup straight away. Something donk said was about how NAVI Junior wanted him to trial and he thought he was better than everyone on the team. I just wanted to get your thoughts on that.

He didn't go because he thought he was better than everyone on the team?

Than the people being invited for tryouts or something. Something along the lines of he felt like he was the best player and he wasn't getting that sort of credit.

I don't know a lot of details about it. I heard they were trying to take donk into NAVI Junior before the war, but it was very close to that moment, I think, because they even dropped any tryouts because the war started and NAVI had to remove all Russians from the team.

NAVI Junior is not about playing in NAVI Junior. This is a trampoline, or a team to go to NAVI. He should not think of himself to be explored in NAVI Junior, it's one step before going directly — for sure he would go up if things had gone differently in the world. It could happen. NAVI was ready to even buy him for a good buyout.

The quote was 'I was sure that if I applied to NAVI Junior, I would get in because there was no one better than me at the time. I really didn't like the fact that they signed guys who were much weaker than me—

[Chuckles]

—I was playing better at worse conditions. It was a blow to my ego, like, why should I go there?'

You know, he says this now, it can also be a little bit twisted because we should ask him in that moment to be clear. He's competitive, he wanted to compete between NAVI Junior players, but I'm pretty sure he was the best player in Spirit Academy, that's the first thing.

The second thing is that b1t from the beginning was the best player of NAVI esports camp and we knew it. So it was built around him. This is a reality, you cannot have three donks in one team. Even you can't find them. You can have them, but you can't find them.

So, basically, he's a little bit young, he has his vision, but I think realistically, like I said, NAVI Junior is a door to the main roster, that's one thing. Second, you should always have some best player in the team. The nature is always like this, you build a lineup around one or two players and you want them to evolve.